Breaking the chains, winning the games, and saving Western Civilization.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Girls don't need brains

At least, they don't need them to attract the opposite sex. A reader at Athol's asks a question about whether intelligent young women should act dumb:

My daughter is in gifted classes, etc. - more the book worm/nerd type. She actually asked me if she should act dumb around boys. I told her to just be nice and smile and be fun but not to change herself. Women get conflicting information. Angelia Jolie or Marilyn Monroe? Tough or sweet? Unavailable or available? Dominant or submissive? Or is it like with men, a little bit of both? Do the same things that impress women, impress men?

No, the same things that impress women most certainly do not impress men. The first thing a smart young girl should contemplate is how sexually attractive she finds Stephen Hawking. Now divide that by a factor of 100. That's about how much value boys place on her intelligence as a factor in how attractive they find her. Now, I understand there are decades worth of movies that have equated snappy, disrespectful banter with a) intelligence and b) attractiveness to men, but it must be kept in mind that these were movies written, produced, and directed by gay men, many of which starred secretly gay men, and not infrequently also happened to be starring women with lesbian leanings.

A triple-gay play is not a reliable model for successful heterosexual behavior. This is why those women who based their approach to the sexual market on Sex and the City tended to fail in spectacular fashion. Acting like a homosexual man is really not the ideal way to attract normal men. The only time men place any value whatsoever on female intelligence is a) when they are looking for a sugar mommy, or b) when they are contemplating the propagation of the species. If the male object of a woman's interest doesn't presently fall into one of those two categories, her intelligence is simply a complete non-factor.

And it is worth nothing that the tedious snappy banter that too often passes for intelligence is the hallmark of the mid-witted, not the genuinely intelligent. The hallmarks of the truly intelligent tend to be a) social avoidance of the intellectually inferior, b) effortless mastery of the crowd with one sardonic remark that cracks everyone up at the expense of the dancing alphas, c) murdering everyone for their failure to adjust their behavior to suit the rational utopian society one has designed to improve upon the previous model.

I try to limit myself to (a) and (b), but it is worth noting that (c) is more conclusive and seldom requires much in the way of repetition.

However, the answer to the main question is "no, a smart girl should not act dumb because she is hypergamous." An intelligent girl should actively look for more intelligent men because she will eventually find herself unhappy if she chooses less intelligent men. Tall girls are happiest with taller men, rich girls are happiest with richer men, and smart girls are happiest with smarter men. However, she should understand that she will be competing with less intelligent women who will be equally appealing to those smarter men despite their lack of intelligence. The main thing to avoid is foolish reliance upon a non-existent advantage; in short, a smart girl should use her intelligence rather than rely upon it, or any supporting evidence of it such as academic credentials, being attractive in itself.

The problem is that because smart women find male intelligence intoxicating, they find it very difficult to imagine that smart men don't feel the same way. But because female intelligence tends to express itself in a fairly light and haphazard manner, it doesn't actually look all that different from a lack of intelligence to the intelligent man. Gifted classes and academic degrees mean nothing. I'm simply not going to be impressed if a woman indicates that she has heard of Sextus Empiricus or makes a reference to the Skeptical school of philosophy, especially if she does so in passing before spending the next half hour rambling on about people in exactly the same manner as the hot blonde with the implants and the perfect gym-honed posterior does.

Intelligence that is unused or foolishly directed is not substantively different than a lack of intelligence.

19 comments:

Anonymous
said...

The Stephen Hawking thing seems a bit off base: Men more then two standard deviations to the right of the mean can barely even communicate with women of average intelligence. Anything beyond a pump-and-dump, you're just not interested. Does this woman want her daughter to be an appealing pump-and-dump but a poor LTR prospect?

I doubt that.

You want a woman who's not as smart as you (or she'll stop respecting you, duh), but not too much dumber. And you (AND she!) definitely don't want to find out too late that she's smarter than you but was hiding it.

What's critical that she not engage in what women think of as intellectual competition, which is just generic female social-dominance behavior with a veneer of intellectualism slapped on top.

That's what women mean when they describe themselves as "smart": That they compulsively shit-test you on pseudo-intellectual pretexts. "Witty banter", my ass.

Your point about pseudo-intelligent "intellectual competition" verbal-based social dominance behavior is a good one. As for Stephen Hawking, I merely cited him as an example of how sheer intelligence does not necessarily generate sexual attraction even in women.

And it is shit-testing, which of course is why women are so easily won over by those men who combine high intelligence with social dominance.

Even intelligent women make remarks that a man of above average intelligence would find remarkably dumb. We spend all our lifes interested in mostly seperate areas which directs our intillects in different directions.

The scale of the dinosaur and space knowledge I soaked up during childhood never really struck me until my fiancee revealed her absoloute ignornce on these topics. This can be cute beyond words. When she mentioned the stegosurus-rex my heart freakin melted and yet I would still place her as above average intelligence wise. In keeping with Vox's commentary though that fact was never that cruical to my attraction to her.

I will put my hands up and admit that I was pleased that my fiancee was earning a degree when we met. I saw it as a sign of aspiration rather than intelligence and meant she stood apart from those whose ambition ended at the dancefloor.

However, as an attractive feature it was much less significant than her looks, cutesyness, family-oriented value base (seriously attrctive) and the fact that she went out of her way to be next to me.

Regarding the importance of intelligence for breeding, I would suppose, given my opinion that environmental influence can overcome significant genetic deficits in the area, that unless an intelligent man wants to mate with someone who is actually crippled by stupidity then they shouldn't be put off.

This is sound advice. Just remember that, there are different facets of intelligence: verbal, spatial, mathematical, logical, etc. There are also related abilities, such as reaction time, memory, concentration, imagination etc.

Most intelligent people have areas of weakness. Witness how many journalists cannot understand statistics at the most basic level. Even if a woman has a Mensa-level IQ, she may be able to respect a guy who is less intelligent but is still fairly smart, socially dominant, funny and imaginative. There are many Mensa members who are not particularly impressive, either in conversation or in their lifetime accomplishments. Personally, I would take a successful small business owner over an unemployed man with a doctorate in mathematical logic, but that's just me.

Watch the grammar on this post's comments improve dramatically in contrast to other posts.

Do you believe there is a difference between social intelligence and book/school-oriented intelligence?

It seems there are plenty of people who have the former, but not the latter, and vice-versa. The latter, I think, is definitely irrelevant to how attractive a woman is, but not so much the former, at least in my case.

Assuming their appearance is equal, I would definitely find the woman with high social intelligence more attractive.

Do you believe there is a difference between social intelligence and book/school-oriented intelligence?

I don't subscribe to the "different intelligences" or "EQ" theories. There is no such thing as "social intelligence", it is simply instinctive social behavior. Some have instincts that are looked upon more favorably by more people.

Basically, if you value "social intelligence in women", you're saying you like popular girls. Which, obviously, most people do.

"But because female intelligence tends to express itself in a fairly light and haphazard manner, it doesn't actually look all that different from a lack of intelligence to the intelligent man."

I really don't need to be rude, nor do you. But if women want to know the truth, that is it. I'm no genius but I'm not a complete idiot, or even average (unfortunately or not, I sometimes really wonder about some "gifts", but that is a discussion for elsewhere).

Oh, and I agree completely with not expressing, but showing, intelligence. If I need to depend on a woman, I want to know that if our pre-agreed plans fall to crap while she is alone on her leg of the thing, that she can pick up the pieces and do the deeds to the best possible outcome. Even then I will not be happy. If she can explain why she went off course, and better, and impress me with what she pulled off in spite of real unforeseen obstacles, then yeah, she will get points. Most women I have known just fail and fail more on top of it. I just realize they can't be depended upon when I am absent. A few have earned sincere respect, up to equality, one I evaluated as my superior on some things. But that is one out of many.

But I won't train a woman, it's akin to trying to train a cat. Either they have it or they don't. Bleh!

"And it is worth nothing that the tedious snappy banter that too often passes for intelligence is the hallmark of the mid-witted, not the genuinely intelligent. The hallmarks of the truly intelligent tend to be a) social avoidance of the intellectually inferior, b) effortless mastery of the crowd with one sardonic remark that cracks everyone up at the expense of the dancing alphas,"

*snork*

really now, if Alpha Game is just going to turn into opportunities for you to make sardonic remarks at Nate's expense people are going to start wondering if you're trying to neg him ... and get the wrong idea.

In the same way that women find it hard to understand that men don't find their intelligence and accomplishments nearly as compelling as their looks and demeanor, I think men may often underestimate the relatively higher importance women place on intelligence versus looks in men.

I've had this reality hammered home to me recently, finding myself the object of some rather startling ardor after only a few conversations over coffee.

There's a common perception (misperception?) that displayed high intelligence is something of an anti-game move for guys. At this point I have to question that assumption. Obviously with the right person and the right set of circumstances it is, apparently, a rather heady aphrodisiac.

Most likely, yes. Intelligent women tend to be more difficult and erratic than average or unintelligent women. Contrary to popular imagination, men don't actually enjoy "challenging" women in a marital capacity. They usually prefer household peace, not drama.

Studies show that women use up to a third more brainpower than men in conversation. This is the true reason men do not care about female intelligence: just about every woman can at a minimum carry a conversation well enough to satisfy a man's needs.

... But then there are some women who even with their biological advantage are so dumb that they are unable to do even this (maybe 2-5% total) and it is extremely frustrating to date such a person.